"Edmond Hamilton - Captain Future's Worlds of Tomorrow 05 - Mars" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hamilton Edmond)

which scourge it -- came a mysterious race of invaders,
the Wallus.
We know very little now about the Wallus. We do
know that they were not of human stock at all, but an alien
race evolved in that hidden land who developed a strange
science of war.
The Wallus sacked Rylik, the legendary capital of the
Great Kings then, within ten years, they drove the Martians
back north of the equator. A half century later, the Wallus
were supreme over the Martians, unhuman masters ruling
the human Martians as slaves.
The Wallus are listed as the Eleventh and Twelfth
Dynasties in the formal chronology of Mars. They were
overthrown about 198,000 B.C. by the human Martians,
who set up a new capital at Syrtis, near the equator. The
remaining Wallus fled back into the mysterious Land of
Storms and are supposed to have died out there, though
there are legends that they still exist in the unconquerable
recesses of that unexplored region.
The Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Dynasties of
the Martians all reigned from Syrtis. Attempts were made
to revive Martian scientific progress, with partial success,
but the glory of the science of the Great Kings was never
attained.
The Polar Kings
The Sixteenth Dynasty is called the Polar Kings. They
were usurpers who seized control of the canal system in the
north polar region, and by cutting off the flow of the
precious water forced all northern and equatorial Mars to
bow to them. A revolution brought the rule back to Syrtis,
in 145,230 B.C. The attempt to revive scientific progress
continued during the Seventeenth, Eighteenth and
Nineteenth Dynasties.
This constant attempt at a renaissance ended in strange
catastrophe. Mechanical inventions multiplied so rapidly
toward the end of this period that there rose a following,
the Cult of the Machine. They maintained that machines
could not only work more efficiently than men, but could
also think more efficiently. They devised unbelievably
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intricate and semi-intelligent, conscious mechanical robot
brains, who were to give impersonal analysis and advice on
every problem.
The system worked well at first. But toward the end of
the Nineteenth Dynasty, the machine-advisors, who had
constantly sought to intensify their own intelligence and
powers, calmly took over active rule of the human
Martians. The machines crushed all opposition and
dispassionately directed all human activities, as rulers.
These Machine Kings, who rank as the Twentieth